A proud unapologetic Black trans woman speaking truth to power and discussing the world around her since 2006

Thursday, April 02, 2015

Why It's Inaccurate For A White Person To Call Blacks Racist

If I had a dollar for every time I have called out the deleterious effects of whiteness and white supremacy on this blog and been inaccurately called a racist by white people inside and outside the LGBT community who have ZERO lived experience with navigating it, I'd be a multimillionare by now.

Once again, racism is not an epithet pissed off white person utters at a non-white person that calls them on their crap. If you believe that bull feces, you've been watch too much FOX Noise or are swimming in too much unacknowledged vanillacentric privilege.

As a TransGriot public service, here's the Sociology 101 definition of racism.

Racism= bigotry/prejudice + systemic power (economic, judicial, police, military, legislative, sexual) used by a majority group to deny, retard or roll back the human rights progress of a minority group.

In the USA and much of the world, historically that group has been white people Black people can be bigoted and prejudiced, but we have never had the power as a group to negatively impact white lives as a group.

Only white people have had that power, and they have (and continue to) gleefully at times use it

And you will get the eye roll, called out in cyberspace or laughed out of the room if you even try to deploy a dictionary definition of racism with me or any other Black person to invalidate our lived experience with it.

To underscore what I'm trying to get across to you in this post, here is Dr. Joy de Gruy Leary explaining to a group of people discussing police brutality and the shootings of unarmed Black people how racism plays a role in it by pointing out the power element.

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About The TransGriot

Monica Roberts, AKA the TransGriot (Gree-oh) is a native Houstonian, GLAAD award nominated blogger, writer, and award winning trans human rights advocate. She's the founding editor of TransGriot, and her writing has appeared at the Bilerico Project, Ebony.com, The Huffington Post and the Advocate.
She works to foster understanding and acceptance of trans people inside and outside communities of color and was recently honored with the Virginia Prince Transgender Pioneer Award

TransGriot Blog Mission Statement

The TransGriot blog's mission is to become the griot of our community. I will introduce you to and talk about your African descended trans brothers and trans sisters across the Diaspora, reclaim and document our chocolate flavored trans history, speak truth to power, comment on the things that impact our trans community from an Afrocentric perspective and enlighten you about the general things that go on around me and in the communities that I am a member of.

--Mission Statement compiled January 2, 2011

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